Herriman’s city council recently approved the hiring of an administrative hearing officer to help keep the city in order. (Herriman City)

By Tori La Rue
| tori@mycityjournals.com

Herriman residents with tall weeds or clutter in
their yards could be facing fines after the city council approved citations for code
violations and hired an
administrative officer to review these claims.

In
Herriman, it’s against city code for residents
to have weeds taller than 6 inches in their yards, deposit or
accumulate dirt or similar materials on the public right of way, keep
inoperable vehicles in their yard, park in the roadway during snowy conditions
or place their own signage on utility poles. However, these laws are commonly
violated, according to city Public Information Officer Tami Moody.

“We
used to just talk with people and make requests with people who were in
violations with city code, but city leaders started thinking maybe there needs
to be a little more depth, a little more meat and potatoes, behind the
violation for it to be impactful and create change,” she said.

In
addition to giving notice violations, city
leaders will now allow
code enforcement officials to issue civil citations and fines for noncompliance.
Moody said city leaders believe this will allow code enforcement officials to
correct problems faster and avoid involving police and other public safety
personnel who have more pressing matters.

This ruling came after another
on Feb. 8 that allowed animal control officers to issue
civil citations for animal violations. Before the Feb. 8 change, officers could only
issue verbal warnings or criminal citations relating to animal violations, so
the new ordinance gives animal control an intermediate option for violations.

An
administrative hearing officer will and hear from residents who have received a
citation either from animal control or code enforcement. The
hearing officer can adjust a citation as he or she sees requisite.

Herriman officials
have hired Greg Christiansen,
Taylorsville’s hearing officer, to fill this role. This is an as-needed
service, so Christiansen will only be paid if there is a hearing for him to
attend.

Christiansen
visited Herriman City work meetings to talk with the city council about his position
at Taylorsville. He said he’s seen Taylorsville’s community become more
beautiful and safer since they started to enforce the
code more thoroughly. The code enforcement fines also brought $120,000 to
Taylorsville city last year, he said.

Although
people may not see the benefit in keeping the community beautiful, Christiansen
said the looks of a city go along way in determining property values. Herriman
City Councilwoman Nicole Martin said she thinks that’s a valuable reason to
enforce city code.

“Your
home is your single biggest investment, and it is very frustrating when you are
in a neighborhood and you can have one person who has no respect for the
ordinance in the city in which they chose to live and by extension it is
hurting the property values around them,” she
said. “This
is not fair and not right. So for me it has little
to nothing to do with the money other than the fact that it serves as an
incentive for them to do what they should do without the fines.”

Martin
continued to say that she thinks creating civil citations for code violations
is a good idea because it establishes a standard of living for the city for
years to come. Code violation is not a huge issue currently, but creating a
culture where people take care of their property will prevent city leaders from
needing to adopt harsher policies later, she said.

Christiansen,
who has worked with West Valley City on code enforcement in the past, said that
city’s main challenge is trying
to fix the code violations that have been going on for decades.

“You’ll
be driving down the street,
and there will be an extremely well-manicured lawns on one street, and then on
the next street you feel like you are in some suburb of LA,” Christiansen said
about West Valley. “The city is trying, but I think the culture that they
created from the beginning is going to be really hard to change. They are doing
a great job to try to overcome that, but it is a challenge.”

Herriman
is at an optimal time in its lifespan to adopt these code enforcement citations
to create a culture for the future, he said.

Mayor Carmen Freeman said
he’d like the city staff to look into the city code to discover changes that
they could make to catch code mishaps before they become a problem. Code
enforcement is likely to be a topic on the council agenda in meetings to come,
Moody said.